I’m looking to get a degree to better facilitate an exit for myself and significant other from the United States. (Looking at New Zealand, Germany, Ireland) Are online only degrees from the likes of ASU and similar any better or worse than one from in-person universities? (Mechanical or Electrical engineering is the plan)
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Online degrees are fine for adults who are looking to change careers or achieve a promotion. 18-20 year olds would lose out on the necessary social and development opportunities of an in-person school.
18-20 year olds would lose out on the necessary social and development opportunities of an in-person school.
Yes, but they specified engineering.
Engineers aren’t known for being social beings :p
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Also I went in person college and the socialization was terrible, I went to several clubs and a lot of them were almost empty. people like to pretend like traditional and personal options are just so fantastic they really aren’t all the cracked up to be
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The punishing courseload is part of it, especially when cost stressed try and cram un as much as fast as possible to get it done faster
Correct, your brain is not fully developed until 25-26. Many 18-20 year olds are still visibly children, and they aren’t mature enough to make decisions independently. Although 18 year olds have reached the age of legal responsibility for themselves in our country, we still implement restrictive laws on them, such as not being able to smoke, drink, or open a credit card without a cosigner. In the US, university functions like a rite of passage into adulthood. You enter as a child, and with guidance from older adults and development opportunities given to you, you exit as ready to function as a mature, employable adult.
Don’t keep spreading that misconception, people are losing rights because of bad brain science. The study your half remembering did not even attempt to study people at age 26 or older and thus you can’t make conclusions
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I mean, we can go back. I am in my 30s, and I am in law school. It’s just that, our economy is a high-knowledge, skills-based service economy. Immature kids that don’t know anything are not very employable. In the US, recent high school graduates have a 20% unemployment rate. We just don’t have enough simple work available for all of the people who would prefer it. If you have the intellectual capacity to perform higher skilled work, you are better off doing it than trying to compete in the oversaturated, undercompensated low skill market.
For your engineering degrees, you’ll definitely want to have some sort of home engineering lab to apply the theory you learned to real-world applications. With an in-person university, they’ll provide all the equipment you need on-site.
Is the question in relation to immigration requirements, or for job prospects? For the former, any accredited university will likely not have a problem being recognized, not unless it’s a for-profit university or has a sizable “controversies” section on Wikipedia. Online degrees from an established public university generally bear the name of the university at-large, so there’d be no noticeable difference when looking at the diploma.
As for the job prospects, that’s going to be very market specific. Perhaps the larger question is whether an online degree or not, is there enough demand in your prospective countries for MEs and EEs that employers are willing to go with a new resident from abroad, rather than from one of the established local universities?
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I can’t see how you could major in mechanical or electrical engineering online. There are projects, there are labs that you have to do, and that happens by coming in-person and working together as a team.
You’d miss out on so much by doing it online and I’m not sure how the curriculum is formatted
The reputation of the school you get your degree from will make some difference (i.e. MIT) but isn’t the most important thing. If you’re worried about competing with degrees from in person schools though, you may be able to find one that accepts online transfer credits and finish out your last year in person and attend the necessary labs as needed to get the degree from that school plus some hands on experience. You’ll need to do some homework and confirm details with the school first.
No matter how you get the degree though, working on and documenting projects outside of any class work, especially with clubs and organizations like for robotics or racing, makes the biggest difference imo. Its the projects that demonstrate your ability to apply your skills and knowledge and solve problems and that is what interviewers and hiring managers will want to hear.
Good luck!
Edit: forgot to mention the in person classes and clubs can also help with networking and references which is often just as important as anything else.
